Following a disgustingly successful Kickstarter campaign which closed out a full $3.7m over its $50k target, Dark Souls the Board Game is finally finished and ready to ship. Steamforged games kindly sent me a copy ahead of time, which I used to make the video review embedded below. As I dove into the very heavy box (the core set alone weighs in at a hefty 3.4kg), however, I found my mind repeatedly coming back to a comment during the initial kickstarter announcement from Steamforged Games - "Prepare to die. Because this will be the hardest board game you have ever played."

The thing is, while that statement certainly fits thematically with the Dark Souls franchise - or, at least, the way the Dark Souls franchise is marketed - it's not a great fit for a board game. Having an improbably hard board game isn't something to be proud of.

That's not to say I don't like a challenging board game, of course, especially when it comes to cooperative games that put everybody in the same boat, but unbeatable boardgames have a tendency to become unplayed board games. I can see my copy of Forbidden Desert - a game I have beaten all of once - from where I'm typing this, for instance, and the best it can expect from me for the foreseeable future is a suspicious scowl.

As I unpacked Dark Souls the Board Game and its sumptuous miniatures, in other words, I worried that Steamforged had shipped an imbalanced product for the sake of living up to Dark Souls' reputation for difficulty. Thankfully, I was swiftly proved wrong.

Just as the game assets have been recreated with great care, Dark Souls the Board Game also does a great job of capturing what it is that makes the souls games so compelling: not that they're hard per se, but that they're exacting. They exercises in failure, yes, but also in repetition and keeping your wits about you.

Man y'all are no fun, it's really interesting to see how they took something as quintessentially videogamey as a boss encounter in DS and translated it to the language of table top games. I'd definitely love to pick this up if it weren't so expensive

Amazon has it up for preorder for $119. I'm kicking myself for forgetting to back this as you get a bunch of expansions and the base game for £80.

Yuuup. Super glad I got on board. Was a little wary and coming into this thread I was half expecting a bad review, but it actually sounds like they did a great job. Can't wait to get this in the mail and actually run through it with friends :D

I initially backed the Kickstarter but then changed my mind. I love Dark Souls, but I was a bit wary of all the Kickstarter extras hype. I love tabletop games, but some of the gameplay I saw didn't really grab me. I can wait, since I have a ton of other games to play. I did back the Superhot card game though. That looks fun.

Stretch goals included a ton more figures and there were also add ons for boss expansions. These kind of things seem to be super popular on Kickstarter at the moment, but I'm not into having dozens of figures if I don't really need them.

Stretch goals included a ton more figures and there were also add ons for boss expansions. These kind of things seem to be super popular on Kickstarter at the moment, but I'm not into having dozens of figures if I don't really need them.

Seeing all the extra stuff included for backers makes the $120 Amazon is charging for the core game seem even more expensive :( Oh well, maybe I'll find a copy in a Goodwill or something 10 years down the road.

Stretch goals included a ton more figures and there were also add ons for boss expansions. These kind of things seem to be super popular on Kickstarter at the moment, but I'm not into having dozens of figures if I don't really need them.

I'm not much into figs. Dark Souls theme makes them slightly more alluring, though, but I'd be just as happy with tokens or whatever. The size growth between regular enemies to bosses does add a nice bit of visual drama.

Although costly, if the game is popular enough it will likely get an insert like one of these, which can make organizing/setup very nice.

Man, this was a much trippier (and more interesting) experience when I read the topic title simply as 'Reviews for Dark Souls: The Board Game' as opposed to the intended 'Reviews for Dark Souls: The Board Game'.

"How will he fellate Dark Souls?" was a sentence that ran through my head, but I guess most people think better of Dark Souls than I do. ... Yeah, that's it. I got nothin' else.

That the quote in the OP implies that Forbidden Desert is some sort of unbeatable challenge is an interesting note to take from that review; especially in terms of judging how hard the game is.

If he found DS more manageable than Forbidden Desert (which is not that terribly difficult), Dark Souls should not be too insane. So that is good for my group.

Yeah, that was weird to me, too. Forbidden Desert comes with (I think) four difficulty levels, and the first two just aren't very hard since it's meant to appeal to a very wide variety of ages and abilities. But then, this is a board game review from a videogame outlet. You're better off going to boardgamegeek if you're looking for reviews that more thoughtfully weigh the merits of the game itself versus its use of the license.